Department of Justice December 2, 2016 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This final rule amends the Department of Justice (Department) regulation implementing title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), which prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities by public accommodations and commercial facilities, including movie theaters. The rule adds specific requirements addressing the obligations of public accommodations that own, lease, or operate movie theaters to provide effective communication to patrons who are deaf or hard of hearing, or blind or have low vision. The rule requires that movie theater auditoriums provide closed movie captioning and audio description when showing a digital movie distributed with such features unless doing so would result in an undue burden or a fundamental alteration. The rule requires movie theaters to have a specified number of captioning devices and audio description devices based on the number of auditoriums in the movie theater that show digital movies. The rule does not impose any specific requirements for movie theater auditoriums that exhibit analog movies exclusively.